


Here's No Great Matter

by tamlane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Aging, Cross-Generation Relationship, Dirty Talk, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Frottage, Incest, Older Man/Younger Woman, Sexual Tension, Sibling Bonding, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Smoking, Teenage Rebellion, Uncle/Niece Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:42:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamlane/pseuds/tamlane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No midlife crisis would be complete without considering a career change, buying a new racing broom, and having a fling with a younger woman.  Charlie Weasley has never been one to do things halfway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here's No Great Matter

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the 2013 [Charlie Ficathon](http://charlieficathon.livejournal.com/).
> 
> Prompt: She's always been his favourite niece, and now he's noticed she's not a little girl any more. She's already noticed he's a full-grown man. Her parents are not pleased.
> 
> Huge thanks to [lightofdaye](http://lightofdaye.livejournal.com/) for cheering me to the finish line and offering his shrewd judgment along the way. More huge thanks to I., who gives the best pep talks ever and made this fic readable despite the fact that it’s not her usual thing. (March 2013)

Charlie awakes with a start, trying to figure out where he is. Pink dawn filters through the window, but most of the light in the room comes from a gaudy clock in the shape of an oversized Snitch.

He rubs his eyes and then takes in the mismatched furniture, most of it covered in scratches and burns. The walls are papered in posters of wizarding rock bands that he’s never heard of. The back of the door is plastered in posters of scantily clad witches posing suggestively with racing brooms.

Basically, it looks like the room of a fifteen-year-old boy.

Then Charlie remembers that it _is_ the room of a fifteen-year-old boy: his nephew, Louis.

He settles back against the pillows, letting his eyes adjust to the semi-darkness. This room will be his until after the interview on Friday, so he might as well get comfortable. He gazes appreciatively at the risqué posters on the back of the door. He’s willing to bet the posters are charmed so that the witches disappear when the door is open, leaving only the brooms. He’d used that trick himself at the Burrow.

Deciding that there's no reason not to take advantage of Louis’s ingenuity, Charlie slides his hand into his pajama bottoms. As he goes to work on his morning wood, he wonders how old those girls are. In their twenties, maybe? It’s been a long time since he had a woman that young. Actually, it’s been a while since he had a woman at all. He’s never been one to fool around with colleagues, and he just doesn't have the same luck at pubs these days.

With a wistful moan, Charlie’s eyes fix on one particular witch near the lower left side of the door. She has hair as red as her lips and some wicked curves beneath her nipped-in waist. He watches as she rolls her hips, mounting the Comet DE360 with her back arched in a way that reveals just one fleeting glimpse of pink, shaven lips between those firmly rounded cheeks. 

“Ah, yeah,” he groans, picking up the pace, “do that again, beautiful.”

It’s a silly command since the picture is running on a short loop, but Charlie doesn’t care. He is really getting into it, mentally inserting himself into the broomstick’s position. He’s imagining that pretty little twat sliding slowly down onto his length when he hears a sound from the next room.

He stops mid-stroke, listening carefully.

It happens again. It’s a giggle. Damn. He didn’t realize the walls were so thin, nor did he realize that one of his nieces was right next door. 

Finding the mood effectively killed, Charlie drags himself out of bed and starts getting dressed. He doesn’t need to be wanking, anyway. He can save that for the shower. Right now he needs his morning run. It won’t do to break his routine, even if he's on a short leave from the reserve.

* * *

Still damp from his shower, Charlie pulls on a pair of jeans and examines his reflection in the full-length mirror inside Louis’s wardrobe. Here he is, pushing the big five-oh. Unbelievable. Where did the last ten, fifteen years go? How is it possible that he has a fifteen-year-old nephew and other nieces and nephews even older than that?

He’s tried to keep his body in optimal condition, partially out of pride but mostly out of necessity. Even though he’s often stuck behind a desk nowadays on the reserve, he never knows when he’s going to need to grab a chain and assist with some wrangling – or quickly get the hell out of the way. His muscles are still rock-hard.

It’s the skin on top of them that could use some work. At this point, it’s such a strange combination of freckles and sun and fire damage that he reckons he almost looks like a new race of human being. And no number of push-ups in the world can stop gravity. Everything has started to wrinkle and sag slightly. The tribal sun on his left pectoral – his very first tattoo – is now bluish and mottled, though it still burns hot when touched, a testament to the artist’s spellwork. Charlie feels a pang of bitter nostalgia when he runs his palm over it.

“Ah well, old man,” he tells his reflection at last, “it’s not like you were ever _Playwitch_ material. But you do have a certain roguish charm.”

“I would agree with that.”

Charlie jumps, feeling heat flood his face, and turns to the door. For a moment, he doesn’t recognize the person standing there. But he knows who it is.

"Dominique."

It's all he can get out because he's trying to figure out when… how…. Merlin, it hasn't been that long since he was last in England. Four years, tops. He doesn't mean to gape. He knows he's embarrassing himself. But kids just don’t understand how surreal it is to be faced with such a keen reminder of how quickly time passes for everyone else but them.

"Uncle Charlie." His eyes snap up, and he sees her smirking at him. "You look surprised to see me."

He becomes acutely aware of the fact that he is standing there shirtless and grabs an ancient Weasley jumper from his bag. "I didn't realize anyone would be here during the day," he says, tugging the jumper over his head and running a hand through his salt-and-ginger curls.

"I work nights," Dominique replies.

She crosses her arms, and it draws Charlie's attention to the fact that she's still wearing pajamas – strappy, sleeveless top and clingy bottoms. It doesn't seem quite appropriate for her to roam about the house like that. He wonders if she wears this in front of her father and brother.

"Ah." Charlie scratches absently at the back of his neck. "Where are you working?" 

"The Tattered Troll." She says it like he's supposed to know what she's talking about. After a few moments of him staring blankly, she takes mercy. "It's a pub," she explains. 

"Ah." Why does he keep saying that? "You're up early then, aren't you?"

Dominique giggles, and he realizes it's the same giggle he heard earlier that morning. "Well, I couldn't get much sleep with you right next door."

Charlie feels his cheeks heat again, even though the probability is low that she knows what he was doing. "I'm sorry," he says, forcing a sheepish grin. "Was the snoring really bad?"

"No," she drawls, stepping into the room. She's smirking again. "It wasn't the snoring."

Charlie isn't sure how to respond. Does she know or doesn't she? And why does it matter? What single man doesn't wake up and have a few moments to himself before the day begins?

"It was your morning routine that woke me up, silly," she says at last, and now she is outright laughing.

"Oh. Right," he replies, still disconcerted but choosing to act like nothing is amiss. He starts digging shirts out of his bag and hanging them up, just to have something to do. "I've always been a morning person. At the reserve, we'd already have half of the day's work done by now."

"Was that a new tattoo on your back?" she asks. As she draws closer, Charlie realizes that she's now surpassed him by a few inches in height.

"No," he lies, because he can't imagine how pathetic she must think it is for a man his age to be getting new tattoos. He did it on a whim when he went to Cluj-Napoca to sign for his International Portkey. 

Dominique refuses to take his word for it, though. With an impish grin, she slips up beside him and yanks his jumper up.

"I mean yes!" he concedes, jerking away. "It's new, yes. It's best if you don't touch them for a few weeks. You know, while they heal."

She is still trying to sneak a peek, and he's scared to wrestle with her because she is obviously not wearing a bra, and he's afraid of touching something he shouldn't touch. "It looks pretty healed up to me," she remarks when he finally stands still long enough for her to look at it.

"Yeah, the bloke who did it was really good," Charlie replies helplessly.

Dominique lowers his jumper at last, and just when he thinks he's in the clear, she grasps onto his bicep and squeezes. "You've still got those gnome-tossing muscles, I see."

Charlie decides this has gone far enough. Dominique has always been a bit of a flirt. But children can get by with flirting. Young women can't. "I don't do a lot of gnome tossing these days, to be frank." The minute the words leave his mouth, he hears the double meaning of what he's said and regrets opening his mouth. Frustrated, he moves to shut the wardrobe doors, and Dominique takes the hint, backing away. "It's chilly this morning," he adds. "You should go put on a robe. Your mother wouldn't like it if you got sick."

She ignores him, walking around the edge of the bed and letting her hand trail across the duvet. "You've already made your bed," she comments.

"Force of habit." He can hear the impatience in his voice, but he can't help it. She's making him feel edgy. "Didn't you make yours?"

She looks at him as though he's the lamest specimen of human being on the planet and then plops onto the bed on her side, her cheek propped up on the heel of her hand. "No. I never do."

"Then you should go do that," he says. He tries to figure out what would possess her to stretch out on this bed right in front of him. She can't be so clueless that she doesn't realize how inappropriate it is. At that thought, his gaze travels up her legs and over her hips, entirely against his will. He still can't believe this is his niece, little Dominique, who always refused to have her hair combed and used to beat up Louis when she thought no one was watching.

"Is something wrong, Uncle Charlie?"

"No," he answers, too quickly. "Why?"

She shrugs. "It seems like you're trying to get rid of me."

He can't tell if she's just putting him on, but there is a petulant note to her voice that makes him soften. "No, not at all," he insists, running his hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm just—" He casts around for something he could be. "—hungry. Have you had breakfast?"

She rolls onto her stomach, wearing an eager expression that makes her look more like the Dominique he knew. "Not yet," she replies. "Are you going to cook?"

"Yeah, of course I will." He smiles because it finally feels like they are back on typical uncle-niece ground. "Go put on a robe. I'll start some eggs and sausages."

"I don't eat eggs and sausages." Now her tone is pure teenager.

"Okay, what the hell do you eat, then?" he snaps. As much as Charlie likes taking care of people, he's not a bloody short order cook.

She grins. "Toast with marmalade and black coffee, please."

Charlie can feel his nostrils flare. "Toast it is."

* * *

Charlie wonders if there will ever come a time when Bill does not greet him by ruffling his hair. This time Bill clucks his tongue as he does it. “Getting awful grey, old man,” he says.

“You’re one to talk, baldie,” Charlie responds with a smirk. “Why don’t you just go ahead and shave it all off and be done with it?” Bill’s thinning hair isn’t as bad as Charlie lets on, though it does make Charlie grateful that he inherited the Prewett hair. 

“Are you kidding? It looks ridiculous on Percy. I'm not falling into the same trap.” Bill plops down at the kitchen table and props his feet in the chair opposite. “What’s for dinner, honey?”

Charlie pauses over peeling a potato and shoots Bill a glare. “Bangers and mash, princess.” He returns to his task with a faint smile. “Is that why you offered me Louis’s room for the week? Afraid you’d starve with Fleur out of town?”

“Yeah, that’s why I _offered_. If you do laundry, you can actually stay.”

Charlie chuckles and fills a pot with water. “So how’s the new nephew, then?” 

“Doing well. Gabrielle, too. Fleur swears he has her smile.” Bill puts on his reading glasses and starts flipping idly through a copy of _The Midas Touch_. “She should be home on Thursday. Sorry there was no one here to welcome you last night, but I had that conference in Dundee until this afternoon.”

“No problem,” Charlie replies with a grin. “I needed that time alone to raid your liquor cabinet, anyway.”

Bill snorts. “Even Fleur doesn’t know where I keep the good stuff. So when’s your interview?”

“Friday morning. I thought I’d go look for some new robes tomorrow.”

“I think we have a coupon around here somewhere for Madam Malkin’s.” Bill gets up and starts rummaging through a junk drawer. “I’ll see if I can find it. And you’d better get a haircut while you’re out or Mum will do it herself.”

“I’d hate to deny her the opportunity.” The aroma of sizzling sausages fills the kitchen, and Charlie whips the potatoes with a twirling motion of his wand. “But I figure I’ll put that off until closer to the end of the week. She’ll have plenty of chances to threaten me with haircuts if I get this job.”

Bill gives up on the coupon search and leans against the counter, crossing his arms. “I'd say you have a good shot at it.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard there’s an insane amount of turnover in that department.”

“Getting too old to play with dragons, then?” Bill teases him. 

That hits a little too close to home for Charlie to be a good sport about it. It’s not like he’s the oldest person on the reserve. “Says the man who works for goblins,” he mumbles. “So just the two of us for dinner?”

“Yeah. Victoire’s got her own place in London, and Louis is still at Hogwarts.”

They begin helping their plates. “And Dominique is working at a pub, I hear.”

Bill sighs heavily. “Yeah. Not like she could do much better even if the job market wasn’t so tight. Only three N.E.W.T.s.”

“Which three?” Charlie asks. He only got four himself, and frankly, the one in Divination had been a shocker.

“Let’s see…” Bill chews thoughtfully. “Care of Magical Creatures.”

“Nice.”

“And Herbology. And Charms.”

Charlie feels irrationally proud of her. “Outdoorsy type, is she?”

“Hell no,” Bill replies with a scowl. “Those are just the ones she didn’t have to study for. She’s got a bad attitude, too. Talks back to her mother.” He spears a sausage on the end of his fork. “And I just found out she’s been smoking cigarettes.” 

“I smoked cigarettes.” Charlie isn’t sure why he’s so eager to rise to her defense. “She’ll give it up when she’s ready.”

“Maybe you could talk some sense into her,” Bill suggests. “She was happy to hear you were coming for the week. She’s always looked up to you.”

“I get her,” Charlie says, shrugging. “I know how hard it is to have a perfect older sibling.”

There is silence for a moment, and then Bill says with a grin, “You know, she used to have a pretty big crush on you.”

Charlie tries not to shift uncomfortably in his seat. Yeah, he knew about that. But he tries to blow it off with a chuckle. “Yeah, it’s a curse, being this dashing.”

Bill is chuckling, too. “For weeks after Christmas, all we’d hear was, _I’m going to marry Uncle Charlie someday._ It drove Fleur crazy.”

As much as it bothers him, Charlie feels something reckless stirring inside him at that. He knows he’s never been Fleur’s favorite brother-in-law. She thinks he’s boorish, and he thinks she’s a right snob. He also thinks she might still hold a grudge for the dragons at the Triwizard Tournament, whether or not it had anything to do with him. Yes, he likes the idea of Dominique pissing Fleur off, especially over him.

“I think that’s probably why Dominique went on about it,” Bill continues. “They’ve always been at each others’ throats. Kind of like Mum always was with the twins, I guess.”

Charlie pulls at a piece of bread. “And I’ll bet Louis gets by with murder, being the only boy and the youngest.”

“Yeah, Fleur makes all kinds of excuses for him.” Bill sits back and rubs his forehead. “And Merlin, both of us were just worn out by the time he came along.”

“I’m telling you, bro,” Charlie says, shaking his head, “we got the raw end of the deal, coming first.”

“You can say that again.”

* * *

It’s raining the next morning. It’s too bad Fleur isn’t there to give Charlie a hard time about it. She always blames him for bringing rain when he comes.

Charlie spends most of the morning in Louis’s bedroom, playing with Louis’s toys. Louis has some great toys. Charlie’s favorite is a set of juggling sticks that emits sparks the longer they stay airborne. He’s pretty sure Fleur would have a hippogriff if she knew he was playing with them in the house. Though, from the look of Louis’s furniture, Louis thinks as little of this prohibition as Charlie does.

Charlie jumps when he hears movement on the landing. So Dominique has finally decided to get up. He looks at Louis’s Snitch clock. 11:42. Charlie will be damned if he's going to make her lunch. Or breakfast. Or whatever she eats when she gets up at 11:42. He’s not sure why he’s so irritated by her sleeping in, unless it’s because he’s been stuck inside all morning, and he’s bored and restless.

He hears the porch door slam downstairs and moves to the window, pulling the curtain aside. She’s wrapped in a fur-lined parka, having a smoke. Now might be the perfect time to approach her about that particular bad habit. 

He grabs his jacket and heads downstairs and out into the cold. Dominique glances at him briefly when he takes a seat next to her on the porch steps, but overall she looks as put out as a typical teenager who doesn’t want to be awake and is suffering a tobacco craving on top of it.

“Not a morning person, eh?” he teases her. He doesn't add that 11:42 could hardly be considered morning.

She looks at him with an expression somewhere between boredom and contempt.

“Big change from yesterday,” he mumbles. 

“I thought you had an interview this morning,” she says. He watches as she takes another drag and exhales pensively, attempting to blow a few smoke rings in the wind. 

“It’s not until Friday.” Charlie stares out at the water, rough with the white caps of waves, and tries to seem indifferent. “So how long have you been smoking?”

“I don’t know. Couple of years.”

“I smoked for years, you know.” He knows this could go one of two ways. He’s hoping for the ‘Uncle Charlie was once kind of cool’ way. 

“I feel a lecture coming,” is the response he actually gets.

He shrugs. “It’s hard to quit. You should know that up front.”

“Who says I’ll ever want to quit?”

When Charlie looks back at Dominique, he finds her smirking at him. Of course she doesn’t think she will ever want to quit. And if she ever decides to, of course it will be easy for her because she’s so much more special than anyone else who was ever addicted to tobacco, right? _Ah_ , he thinks, _the near-sightedness and narcissism of youth._

She narrows her eyes. “Did Dad put you up to this?”

Charlie surrenders. He really should stick up for Bill. He should probably stand his ground and continue with the lecture. But he remembers all the anti-smoking lectures he received. They never worked. “Yeah, he did.”

A wicked grin spreads across her lips. “So how long has it been since you had a smoke?”

Charlie rubs his forehead. “A long time.”

“Oh, come on, then. How long?”

He sighs heavily. “Probably fifteen years.”

Now Dominique is laughing. “Wow!” she exclaims. “That’s, like, almost my entire life.”

Charlie shoots her a contemptuous glare. “Yeah, I’m ancient. Thanks for the reminder.”

“So did Hogwarts have indoor plumbing when you went there?”

“Careful, sweetheart.”

It's the same term of endearment that Charlie has always used for her – for all the younger women in his family, actually. But when he says it this time, he notices that her gaze drops to his lips, and he wets them, entirely without conscious thought.

“You know what I think?” Dominique asks. She’s stubbing out the butt of her cigarette on the steps and reaching for her pack. Artemis Blues. Artemis cigarettes have a reputation for being girly, but they’re a harsh smoke.

“What do you think?” Charlie asks, not sure he wants to know.

Dominique shakes the pack at him. “I think you should celebrate fifteen years of smoking cessation with a fag.”

Charlie chuckles. “You can’t be serious.”

Ah, but she is. He can see it in her eyes. He sees something else there, too. A challenge. A dare. And he has to ask himself… if he takes that cigarette, what kind of message will that send her?

It’s undeniable that he would be setting a bad example. It’s likely that she’s baiting him, and she’ll lose respect for him for rising to such a silly dare at his age. It’s remotely possible she’ll think he still has some cool left in him. The fact that he even considers that line of reasoning makes him nervous, but in the end, it's the one that wins. 

“Yeah. All right, then.” Her eyes light with triumph, which makes him feel the need to add, “I suppose one couldn’t hurt, could it?”

“Open up,” she says with a giggle, and then she inserts the cigarette between his lips. “That’s it.”

Charlie feels old, stupid, and completely patronized. When Dominique raises her wand, he pushes her hand away. “I’ll do it myself, thanks.”

She raises one eyebrow, and they each light their own fags. He prepares himself for a fit of coughing, but instead he merely feels a slight tickle of discomfort when he inhales. Then, after a few puffs, he feels dizzy as fuck.

“Are you getting a buzz?” Dominique asks, giggling again. 

“Nope,” he lies, blowing a few smoke rings of his own. “I’m good.”

They sit in companionable silence for a minute. Charlie looks out to sea again. A lone gull swoops in and lands in the surf but then thinks better of it and flies out of sight into the grey, rainy sky.

“I bet all the young people smoke and drink on the reserve,” Dominique says.

“They can be a wild bunch,” Charlie admits. Then he gives her a pointed glare. “But we work hard at what we do.”

“What about you?” she asks. “Did you drink a lot when you were younger?”

Charlie likes the way she uses the word ‘younger’ instead of ‘young.’ It’s subtle – maybe she doesn’t even realize what she’s said – but he appreciates the difference. “I’ve had my fair share of hangovers,” he confesses.

Dominique is silent for a minute. Charlie decides that this is kind of nice… smoking a fag with her… talking about his younger days… it almost feels like they’re bonding….

“I bet you’ve had your fair share of one-night stands, too.”

Charlie chokes on a drag and sputters smoke. He is appalled to be taken so off guard. “And what could you possibly know about one-night stands?” he inquires, when he finally stops choking.

“Well, that’s the best kind of sex, isn’t it?”

Charlie turns his head to look at Dominique – really look at her. There is a defiant set to her jaw, but she’s blushing, thank Godric. Charlie would be disturbed if she wasn’t blushing. He can feel a red flush creeping across his own cheeks. 

He clears his throat. “It’s not bad,” he agrees. Then he tries to sneak in another mini-lecture. “It’s not something you want to do all the time, though.” He pauses. "And certainly not without protection."

Dominique rolls her eyes at him. “Spare me,” she says, “I've been on the Potion for over a year now. And I happen to enjoy casual sex.”

Charlie just stares at her, his cigarette forgotten. “Is that so?” He injects the question with all of the sarcasm he can muster.

“Mm-hmm. Especially if I'm somewhere I might get caught." Her eyes gleam. “That’s the best.”

All Charlie can do is stare, trying to figure her out. She is obviously trying to shock him. She wants to get a rise out of him. That has to be it. He refuses to believe she enjoys casual sex in situations where she might get caught, because that is… not the kind of information he needs to know about any of his nieces.

“Uncle Charlie?”

“What?”

“Aren’t you burning your fingers?”

“Oh.” Charlie looks down at his cigarette to find that it’s definitely a close call. “Right.” He tosses it into the yard.

“No, you can’t do that,” Dominique says, rolling her eyes some more. “Mum will throw a fit.”

“I thought she knew that you smoked.”

“That doesn’t mean she wants cigarette butts in her herb garden.” Dominique moves her legs to the side so that he can see the crumpled cigarette butt at her feet. “I’ll vanish them before I go inside.”

“Right. Well, I’m not going out in the rain to get it.”

“One probably won’t hurt,” she concedes. “Want another?”

Fuck if Charlie _wants_ another one. But now he feels like he _needs_ one. “All right.”

Dominique reaches to put this one between his lips, too, but he lifts his hand and takes it from her. “Actually, I think I’ll save it for later.”

“Suit yourself,” she says with a shrug. “What were we talking about?”

Charlie swallows. She knows exactly what they were talking about.

“Oh yeah.” She grins. “Getting caught. So there was this one particular corridor at Hogwarts. It was usually empty, but you never could tell when someone might show up, you know? And that was my favorite place. You had to be very quiet so you didn’t get caught.”

Charlie decides that if she wants to play with him, he'll play. “But half of the fun is in making noise,” he points out. He enjoys the brief look of surprise that crosses her face.

The look quickly morphs into affected disinterest. “Yeah, but it was a risk.”

“You like taking risks?” he asks. “Because they don’t always pay off, you know.”

“I don’t like being told that I can’t do something,” Dominique says in a quiet voice, her eyes narrowed.

“No, I get what you’re saying,” Charlie replies, shifting on the step. A porch full of furniture, and she sits on the fucking steps. It doesn’t matter. He is going to end this conversation soon. Any minute now, in fact. “Nothing’s more exciting than the forbidden.”

“Exactly,” she says. “If there’s someone, for example… a person… who I know I’m not supposed to be with….”

Dominique trails off, and something shifts abruptly between them. She looks at Charlie from under her eyelashes, and his breath catches in his throat. He realizes with a jolt of uneasiness that she isn’t playing with him. The slinky pajamas, the way she stretched out on that bed, and now this conversation – there is real intent behind it.

“…it makes me want them even more.”

Charlie can feel his eyelids drooping heavily under that suggestion. His lips part. And although he strives to keep certain images out of his mind, they rise to the forefront, and his cock starts to get hard. “You’re eighteen,” he snaps. "You don't know what you want."

“You don’t think so?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you a secret.” Dominique twirls a lock of ginger hair around one thin finger, and Charlie's eyes follow the motion.

His heart rate picks up. He can feel it pounding in his ears. He knows now that he’s being lured in. But Charlie has always had a weakness for danger. “What?”

Dominique lowers her gaze for just a moment, and when she looks back up, her eyelids are heavy, too. “I’m wet right now.”

Charlie freezes. He licks his lips and feels the cold air sting them. Words fall from his tongue without thought. “Are you really?” This time the sarcasm doesn't quite make it to the surface.

Her voice is suddenly very quiet, and her expression is serious. “Wanna feel?”

“No.” Everything is hazy, as though he has just been dunked underwater. He can’t figure out how this conversation ended up here.

“Are you hard right now?”

“No,” Charlie lies. “Of course not.”

“You know what else I like?” Now Dominique's voice is just above a whisper. He has to watch her lips to catch her words.

Charlie knows he should get up and walk away. He knows this conversation is only going to get more uncomfortable. The problem is that his discomfort is starting to shift into something entirely different. “What’s that?” he asks.

She pauses. Then, eyes widening impishly, she whispers, “Sucking cock.”

Charlie’s gaze shoots to her lips. He can see it… _no_ , he refuses to think it. “Why are you telling me this, Dominique?”

“Because you look interested.”

Every conscious part of Charlie is telling him to run, run, run. Some other part of him keeps talking. They are just words. Words are not action. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this, not really. “What do you like about it?”

“I like being in control like that.” She still wears that serious expression. “I like making someone moan for me.”

It’s such a generic response that Charlie wonders if she’s ever really done it. He discovers that he’s grinding his teeth, torn between suspicion and something that feels like jealousy, even as irrational as that would be. “You shouldn’t give yourself away so easily,” he says.

A crease forms between her eyebrows. “You shouldn’t judge me.”

She’s right. He certainly has no right to judge anyone at the moment. And although he can recognize the perversity of it, some sick part of him wants to know exactly how much further she will take this. Charlie has spent his life wanting to know how close he can get to _too close_. “Tell me what else you like.”

The blush is back, but it’s softer. “I like the look on your face right now.”

“What look?”

“You’re looking at me like you want to fuck me.”

Charlie can feel his jaw working at that accusation. “I would never do that.”

“I know you wouldn’t.” She cocks her head to the side, studying him. “But it’s fun to think about, isn’t it?”

As if he would admit anything of the sort. “Maybe,” that other person admits. The one that doesn't seem to care what dangerous waters they’re getting into here.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” Dominique whispers. She holds his gaze like a champ. She doesn’t look away once.

“Oh yeah? How long?” he demands.

“Years.”

Charlie can’t remember the last time he was so uncomfortably hard. Yeah, he’s seen the way she looks at him. But back then it was the look of a silly little girl. This look she’s giving him now is very different.

“You know why you’re my favorite uncle?”

Really, this conversation is going to have to end very soon. “Why?”

“Because you’re a good person.” She leans into him a little more. Not touching him, just leaning in. “But you’re a little rough, too.”

“Just like you, eh?” he counters. That’s what she thinks. He can hear it. 

“And I can talk to you like this, and you just listen. You don’t try to take advantage.”

At that, something clicks inside him, and arousal becomes anger. He hates what she’s just said. It feels like manipulation. It almost makes him want to give her a reason not to trust him so much, just to spite her.

“It turns me on to talk like this. But I can’t talk to boys my age like this,” she continues, either unaware of his aggravation or unconcerned. “They don’t get it. It’s all about rutting away and getting off. I like to be teased.”

“I think you like to be the one doing the teasing,” Charlie snaps. He can hear the edge of impatience in his voice, and it scares him a little bit. He understands that this anger is misplaced. He is the adult here. She is a very adult-looking child, and maybe she doesn't realize what she's doing.

“You want me to get you off right now?” Dominique whispers, and she is dead serious. “I’ll do it.”

“ _No_ ,” Charlie says firmly. “I don’t want that.”

“You're going to have a wank over this conversation, aren't you?”

Dominique looks down at his hands, and Charlie discovers that he’s running his fingers over his unlit cigarette. He stops abruptly. “No.”

Then Dominique laughs at him, and it sounds especially shrill after the quietness. “Liar.”

She gets up and stretches. Charlie looks up, and she stares down at him with a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.

“I’d better go get ready for work.”

Although he’s wound so tightly that it’s hard to breathe, Charlie forces calm into his voice. “Can I make you some lunch?” he asks. It is suddenly very important to him that he appear to be in control of himself and unaffected by their conversation.

“Yeah, I’ll take a sandwich, thanks.”

The door slams behind her, and that's when Charlie realizes that Dominique has left the task of vanishing her cigarette butts entirely up to him.

* * *

Charlie clutches the bag containing his new robes for the interview. They weren't cheap, and he really doesn't need to spend any more money, especially when he might have relocation expenses in his near future. But the rain hasn't cleared up, and he figures it can't hurt to step inside Quality Quidditch Supplies for a moment to get a temporary break from the damp and cold.

He inhales the scent of polished wood and looks up at the racing brooms that line one wall of the shop. His Comet 320 is only five years old, and there's nothing wrong with it. A new broom would be a splurge. But it's not like he splurges all the time. All right, so he just splurged on the tattoo, but he got a good deal, and a new broomstick would be a _practical_ splurge.

He's eyeing the new Firebolt when a voice behind him inquires, "You play Quidditch?"

Charlie turns slightly. The owner of the voice is a bulky youth with close-cropped hair and especially heavy forearms. His name tag reads _Phil_ , and he looks like such a stereotype that Charlie almost heads for the door because he knows that any 'assistance' is going to come with a healthy dose of condescension.

"Yeah," Charlie says. When Phil gives him the anticipated look of skepticism, he feels a mixture of annoyance and embarrassment. "I mean, I used to." He wishes it wouldn't sound so desperate to add that he was Gryffindor Quidditch Captain.

"That's a Quidditch broomstick," Phil says, nodding to the Firebolt. "It would be a waste to use it for Sunday joyrides."

Charlie feels his jaw clench. "I don't do joyrides," he bites out. 

Phil surveys Charlie from head to toe. "What _do_ you do?"

"Well, today I thought I'd buy a new broomstick," Charlie snaps. "Is that all right with you?"

Phil changes tack immediately. "Now, don't get me wrong," he says. "I'm here to make sure you get the right broom for your needs. The new Cleansweep, for example, has lots of automatic features. Auto altitude maintenance, cruise control, self-snipping tail twigs. Respectable acceleration of 60 in 10."

"Yeah, my dad would love it," Charlie deadpans. But he grudgingly admits to himself that maybe Phil has a point. The Firebolt is outrageously expensive, and if he moves back to England, he'll probably want something a little more practical. He spots the broom that the redhead on the back of Louis's door was riding. It's not much more practical for a prospective Ministry employee, but it's a Comet, and it's damn fine-looking. He can still see those creamy thighs wrapped around the handle. "What about this one?"

Phil gives him what appears to be an appreciative nod. "The Comet DE360. That's been a popular one for the past few years."

_Sex sells_ , Charlie thinks. It worked in his case, anyway.

"Streamlined mahogany handle and unparalleled precision," Phil continues. "Switches direction with barely a thought."

Perfect for working with dragons. Charlie feels a stab of regret for even considering a change of career. "Acceleration?" he inquires.

"90 in 10." Phil pauses. "Not the smoothest when it comes to descent, though. Folks say it tends to vibrate in dives."

Charlie can live with that. It can't be worse than the used Shooting Star he'd used until his fourth year at Hogwarts. "How's it handle in stop-and-go?"

"Good. The braking charm is patented, been in use by Comet for over fifteen years. Won't lock up on you." Phil shrugs. "Probably the best out there for dodging Bludgers."

This broom is perfect for Charlie. Well, it's perfect for the life that Charlie is about to give up. He can see himself on the reserve, on aerial detail on this broomstick, checking the cliffs for hatchlings. He can also see himself landing at the local pub on it, and Petrica the barmaid giving him an appreciative, if slightly charitable, smile. 

"Will you throw in a pair of gloves?" Charlie asks.

* * *

It's still raining the next morning, and Charlie is starting to go stir-crazy. He wants nothing more than to test out his new broomstick, and it's not that he's totally averse to flying in the rain, but he's a little embarrassed now about his purchase. The more he looks at it, the more he realizes that this broomstick is going to earn him some sniggers when he shows back up on the reserve with it. It's flashy. He doesn't know what he was thinking. In fact, he might take it back.

He stows it under Louis's bed and roams the house. He does three sets of crunches and push-ups. He mops the kitchen floor without magic for the exercise. He makes some tea. He thinks about the fact that Dominique will be getting up any minute now, and he feels a strange mixture of excitement and apprehension.

Bill joked about Charlie doing the laundry, and only because he's so bored, Charlie decides that it wouldn't hurt to at least fold whatever is in the dryer. He scoops the contents out onto the counter and starts working. Towel. T-shirt. Towel. Boxers. Washcloth. 

He stops.

He's pretty sure that these are not Fleur's knickers. He could be wrong, of course. Perhaps Fleur wears shocking pink scraps of silk and lace with green butterflies embroidered along the waistband. He doubts it. 

Charlie feels a shock of something run down his spine. He doesn’t want to call it desire.

The knickers are all tangled up from the motion of the dryer, and he carefully unwinds them, running his thumb over the soft cotton lining the crotch. It feels wrong, something that's so slinky and so juvenile at the same time. It's stupid of him because they've just been washed – he knows it – but nevertheless, Charlie lifts them to his nose and inhales. And he can smell it beneath the sterile scent of laundry soap. He can smell—

"Uncle Charlie?"

Dominique's voice comes from the bottom of the stairs, and Charlie jumps, stuffing the garment into the pocket of his jeans. "Yeah, in here," he calls, cursing under his breath. He grabs another t-shirt and starts folding it. "Got any lights that need to be washed?"

"I can check and see."

She's standing at the door to the laundry room now, leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed. From the corner of his eye, Charlie can see bare shoulders and legs. His heart rate picks up. He wants to look, and at the same time, he's worried about how his body will react to what he sees.

"Well?" he prods. "Go on, then. I want to get a load in before lunch."

Dominique giggles. "I'll bet you do." She saunters into the small space, and Charlie freezes, his hands curling in a half-folded t-shirt.

She stands right next to him, and he feels his skin sizzle where her bare arm presses against his. Then she leans over him, and the curve of her breast brushes over the inside of his elbow. "What are you doing?" he asks. 

"I'm helping," she replies, digging around in the pile of laundry. She weeds out the rest of her knickers, her hand brushing his, and starts making a show out of folding them. "I didn't think you'd want to bother with these."

Charlie moves before he even realizes what he's doing. His fingers curl around her wrist, and he turns to look at her at last. Her long, light red hair is sleep-tangled. One matching eyebrow shoots up in challenge. The elegant planes of her face are almost all Fleur, but her eyes are the exact same color of blue as his. She inherited Bill’s stature. Charlie has to tilt his head back slightly to look her in the eyes.

"What… are… you… _doing_?" he repeats, drawing out each word.

A hint of a smirk tugs at her lips, and then she wets them. "What do you mean?"

Charlie swallows heavily. "Why did you say those things to me yesterday?"

Dominique shifts her stance then, turning to face him. As though snapping back to himself, Charlie drops her wrist and shoves his hands in his pockets, fingers tangling in the stolen knickers.

“Because I was bored,” she replies. She reaches her bare foot out and curls it around his calf. 

After a momentary battle with himself, Charlie lets his gaze drop. He's not even sure that what she's wearing would classify as pajamas. It's the same strappy top she had on that first morning, but beneath it she wears the shortest pair of red terrycloth shorts he's ever seen. They are so clingy that he can make out the lips of her cunt. His pulse races, and his cock starts to harden, and he tries to look up, only to get stuck on her breasts. They're small and pert, the peaked nipples poking at the thin material of her top.

"Uncle Charlie, are you checking me out?" she taunts him.

Charlie drags his hand over his face and focuses on her lips. "Why would you come down here dressed like this?"

Those lips twitch at the corners. "What's wrong with it?"

Either she really doesn't know, which is impossible. Or she doesn’t care, which is reckless. Or she did it on purpose, which is unthinkable. Part of him realizes that he doesn't have to stand here and put himself through this torture. He could walk away. He could go to Louis's room and lock the door. And he should. He stays right here because he wants to.

Actually, he wants to do a lot more. He’s already thinking about slipping his fingers under the hem of those shorts. He can imagine what it would feel like to let his palm curve over the soft swell of her arse as he lowers his lips to grasp wetly at both her nipple and the fabric over it….

"Please go put a robe on," he begs. 

"No," Dominique replies. Her tone is full of childish rebellion. "I like it when you look at me like that."

Charlie’s fists curl in his pockets, and again he feels that flash of aggravation. She’s teasing him solely because she thinks she can get away with it. And of course she is getting away with it. What the hell is he supposed to do about it? 

"And so do you," she whispers. She takes a step closer. “You want to do more than look, don’t you?”

A mixture of arousal and frustration makes Charlie want to call her bluff. It’s followed closely by the same strange lucidity that he feels when he sees the talons of a Welsh Green twitch and realizes that things are about to get fiery. It’s the same desperate calm that he always felt with the Snitch teasing him and a Bludger on his tail. Danger has always made Charlie cautious to a point. Then it makes him calm. It makes him fearless.

He moves until her back is against the counter. Then he clamps his hands around the edge on either side of her, careful not to touch her, and watches her eyes. The pupils widen. “And just what do you think I want to do, Dominique?” This should be interesting.

Sure enough, she starts to flush. She wets her lips. “I think you want to kiss me.”

Of course she does. She has no clue. Charlie shakes his head. “Guess again.”

She reaches up to place her palm against his chest, and he bats it away. 

“None of that,” he snaps. “Answer the question.”

He can see in her eyes that she knows she’s pushed him too far. That he expected. The thing that disturbs him is that she appears to like his reaction. He meant it as a deterrent. But her torso arches slightly, and her lips part. “You want to fuck me,” she replies.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he says softly, watching the pulse jump in her neck. “You can do better than that. Be more specific.”

She swallows heavily, but she says nothing.

Charlie lets out of huff. “That’s what I thought.”

But when he starts to straighten and walk away, she grabs a fistful of his shirt, and he’s so startled by it that he freezes. She tilts her chin back so that she’s looking down her nose at him, and she says, “You want me to get on my knees right here in the laundry room and take out your cock and suck you off.”

The words are spoken quickly and somewhat awkwardly, but that doesn’t change the way it makes his blood roar in approval. He should stop her right there. But again, he wonders how far she’ll take this. And they’re just words. “Continue.”

Her blush dissipates, and her jaw sets. “You want to tell me that I deserve to get a throat full of cock for teasing you like this.”

Charlie didn’t realize it, but that’s exactly what he wants to tell her. When he speaks, he can hear a husky edge to his voice. “Don’t stop now.”

She fails to hold his gaze, and her eyes instead drop to his lips. Her fist is still curled tightly in his shirt. “You want to rub the head of your dick over my lips. Make me wet it with the tip of my tongue.”

Charlie feels the edge of the counter digging into his palms. Every muscle in his torso tightens, and her eyes go wide as she sees the effect she’s having. And then something clicks, and she’s a different person. Her eyes gleam. She realizes that she now has a far different power than too-short pajama shorts will ever give her.

“You want me to _beg_ to suck your cock.”

Fuck yes, he does. His cock is swollen and aching at the thought of it.

“You want me to take every inch of it in my mouth. You don’t care if it makes me gag.”

All right, so maybe he should have given her a bit more credit. 

“You want to grab my hair in your fist and yank on it until you hear me whine around your hard-on—” She pauses with a grin. “—and we both know you are as hard as you’re going to get right now, _Uncle_ Charlie.”

It’s wrong. It’s so wrong for that to make him even harder, but it does.

She’s in her stride now, owning every word. “And you want to fuck my mouth. You want to fuck your thick prick in and out of my mouth, just like you want to fuck my tight little cunt. And you want to feel your balls tighten. And you think you should come down my throat. You think you should ram your cock down my throat and shoot off and make me swallow every drop.” She smiles. “But that’s not what you want, is it?”

“No,” Charlie pants. “Tell me.”

She uses her grip on his shirt to yank him so close that their lips nearly touch. “You want to pull your cock out of my mouth and shoot your hot, sticky load all over my face.”

Charlie squeezes his eyes shut. His heart is pounding fit to burst, and it takes every bit of restraint that he’s learned over fifty years to keep from just grinding against her until he comes through his clothes. He finally opens his eyes and looks down at her body, and _fuck_. Her nipples are so hard, and her chest heaves with her breathing, and he wants to rip that sorry excuse for a shirt off of her. 

But he can’t do that. This is all he can get. He has to settle for it.

“Charlie—”

He takes a deep breath and slowly extricates her fingers from his shirt. Then he rolls his neck, summoning control he didn’t know he had, and clears his throat. “Brilliant story, sweetheart." He chuckles, barely believing what they've just done and still dizzy and aching from it. "How about a smoke?”

Dominique stares at him for a moment, eyes still gleaming. But eventually she shrugs and brushes past him, knocking against his shoulder as she goes. "All right. Meet you outside."

Charlie rubs a hand over his forehead. At least she has to put clothes on for that.

* * *

As soon as Dominique leaves for work, Charlie jerks off. Then he decides that he can't go another minute without trying out his new broom.

He digs around in a downstairs closet until he finds one of Bill's rain jackets, which is a bit too small for him, but it gets the job done. Then he totes his new baby outside, trying to find a spot of grass suitable for takeoff.

It's nearly a torrential downpour, the rain falling diagonally, pelting the white sand. This is nothing. Charlie's played Quidditch in much worse. He's caught the Snitch in much worse. And what better way to test out how a new broom will handle than in heavy wind?

Feeling a rush of adrenaline, Charlie mounts his new Comet DE360 and prepares for the ride of his life. But as he kicks off, his foot slips on the wet grass, and his ankle twists with a sickening burst of pain, and Charlie ends up face down in the sand.

It's just a sprain, but it takes every effort not to limp around the kitchen while he makes dinner that night. It's effort well spent because Bill would never let him hear the end of it.

* * *

Charlie is about to hobble downstairs to make breakfast the next morning when he notices that Dominique’s bedroom door is open. His feet begin carrying him in that direction, entirely against his will. It would be rude, he supposes, not to offer to make her breakfast. At least that’s what he tells himself.

Dominique is lying on her bed reading _Belladonna_ , and for once, she's already dressed. Good. Maybe she's come to her senses. Maybe they got all of this out of their system in the laundry room, and now they can move forward as decent, ordinary relatives. He's a good uncle. He makes good toast. He doesn’t lust after his nieces. Yesterday was an aberration. Today is a new day.

“Good morning,” he says, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed.

“Good morning,” she responds curtly. She doesn’t look up from her magazine.

“I was going to make some breakfast. Can I make you some toast?”

“No, thank you.”

Charlie's eyes narrow. There is a peevish tone to her voice. She's acting like he told her that she couldn’t go to a rock concert or something.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks warily.

Dominique still refuses to look up. “I’m grumpy. Got in late and couldn’t sleep.”

He knows exactly when she got in. 3:30am. He wonders if Bill knows about that. Charlie tries not to wonder where she was because it's none of his business.

“Want some coffee then?”

He doesn’t know why it's so important to him, but he really wants her to come downstairs for breakfast. He wants them to be normal. He wants to…. All right, so they're never going to be normal again. 

“No, thank you.”

Charlie swallows a lump in his throat. Is she suddenly feeling guilty? Strangely, he isn’t. But it doesn’t sound like guilt in her voice. It sounds like resentment, and that is much worse.

“Fine then,” he says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and turns away from the door.

“Wait.”

Charlie freezes, facing the wall of the landing, where Fleur’s framed embroidery hangs: _Bless this happy home._

“I’m hungry,” he snaps. “It’s almost ten.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

Uh-oh. He doesn’t want to turn around. He focuses on the embroidery in front of him. He’s never noticed it up close. It has hundreds of intricate swirls of navy blue and silver, and they glimmer in the bright sunlight streaming into the hallway from Dominique's room.

“About what?” he asks, half convinced that he doesn’t want to know.

“About yesterday.”

Charlie should feel a pang of remorse. Instead, he feels a jolt of arousal shoot through his cock. He digs his hands more deeply into his pockets, as though that will keep him from getting hard. “What about it?”

“I want to do it again.”

It's hard to repress the shudder working down his spine. He doesn’t want breakfast. He wants to do it again, too. He says nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“Only this time….”

Dominique's voice trails off. Charlie was hoping for those three words, even as he was dreading them. He licks his lips. “What?”

She is silent for a moment. He can hear the sound of surf in the distance. He almost thinks he can hear the house settling.

“This time I want you between my legs.”

Charlie presses his eyes closed and releases the breath he’s been holding. There is no use fighting the images that flash through his mind: her young, perfect legs spread wide… pink, wet flesh glistening for him as he slowly spears her with his cock….

“That’s not going to happen,” he asserts, mostly for his own benefit.

“We could keep our clothes on.” Now there's an excited edge to Dominique's voice. He's not walking away, so she knows she's got him. He hears the bed squeak and realizes she's moving towards him. “I don’t see anything wrong with it, if we have our clothes on.”

Charlie's body really likes that idea. Why didn't he think of it? Oh, right… maybe because he's not a horny teenager who gets off on dry-humping because it's the only action he can get. And maybe because he shouldn’t be thinking about any of this at all.

“Isn’t your mother supposed to be home today?” he asks, sounding every bit like a horny teenager. He also realizes that he has serious problems if that's the best protest he can come up with.

“Not until this afternoon.”

Small hands slide under his arms and around his waist, and he jumps. He refuses to turn around, but he can’t help looking down at those little fingers spreading out over his chest. His skin is on fire under his jumper, and he can feel his muscles twitch at the contact.

“Stop,” Charlie demands, but it sounds half-hearted, even to him.

“Why?” Dominique asks. “What’s wrong with this?”

He can’t answer her. He can feel his cock straining against his jeans as she toys with the hem of his jumper, so close to touching his bare skin. He wonders when he became a total glutton for punishment.

“Isn’t this why you walked over here to my bedroom? Weren’t you hoping to pick up where we left off?”

“No,” Charlie lies.

Dominique rests her cheek against his shoulder. “Yes, you were.”

Charlie takes a deep breath and releases it in a long sigh. He closes his fingers around her wrists and eases her hands down and away from his body. Charlie enjoys taking risks. But there are risks, and then there's _this_. “Don't you get it, Dominique?” His mouth is dry. He has to lick his lips and swallow before he can go on. “The more we do, the harder it’s going to get to stop.” This very moment is proof.

"You can stop,” she whispers into his ear. "You stopped yesterday."

Without warning, she sucks his earlobe between her lips, and his body jerks from the contact. He can feel her breasts pressing against his back now. He's so close to turning around and picking her up and throwing her down on her bed and ripping her jeans off….

Charlie tries to think reasonably while he still can. He thinks about crawling between her legs, with both of them still clothed. He thinks about fitting his body against hers and grinding down on her – just enjoying the friction. How long has it been since he's done anything like that without expectation that it would go further? Maybe since he was her age?

“We’ll keep our clothes on,” Dominique promises. He knows she can tell how close he is to giving in. “No touching underneath our clothes.” She squeezes his arms. “Okay?”

Charlie pulls away from her. He briefly entertains the thought of walking away. He glances at the stairs. But instead, he finds himself turning around. Dominique is licking her lips, and her gaze darts between his eyes and his mouth. Maybe she thinks he's going to kiss her, but he just lifts his hand and places his fingertips on her chest, right below the hollow of her neck, gently pushing her back. She refuses to move until she realizes that he's going to follow her.

“Okay,” Charlie says softly. “All right, then.” He figures he is the world’s biggest fool, because he's backing her slowly towards the bed. He drops his hand, and she keeps right on moving. “Absolutely no touching under our clothes.”

Dominique nods, eyes wide, and then jumps as the back of her legs hit the edge of the bed.

“No kissing, either,” Charlie insists. It's too easy to get lost in a kiss.

“All right,” she agrees. Something that looks an awful lot like triumph dances in her eyes. “No kissing.”

“Lie down.”

Charlie watches as she eases herself onto the bed and scoots back towards the pillows. Even after the trash she talked yesterday, she looks so young to him that, for a moment, he feels like he's thirty years younger, doing this for the first time. He clings to that feeling – the only alternative is that he's a sleazy old man. No, he's worse than a sleazy old man. Plenty of sleazy old men go for young girls, but he bets they stay away from their nieces.

At that thought, Charlie considers running. The problem is the look she's giving him. It's the look of a woman who knows _exactly_ what she wants, and he caves under the weight of it. He crawls onto the bed and stretches himself out beside her, watching her watch him. _This is going to be fine_ , he tells himself. He's not going to get carried away. They're going to be fully dressed. They can stop at any time.

Charlie takes a deep breath. Then he curls his hand around Dominique's thigh and starts to massage it in a slow rhythm. With each caress, he moves his hand higher, his thumb inward. It's what he would have done many years ago, when it was all snogging and groping… when the journey was more important than the destination… when he had to work on a girl all evening just to get his fingers over the crotch of her jeans.

Dominique's hips start to move, encouraging him. His hand stretches. He moves his thumb over the fly of her jeans and presses down, rubbing. She gasps and bucks, but it's guesswork trying to find her clit through her jeans.

“I can’t see what I’m doing,” Charlie says, his voice husky. “You’ll have to tell me when I hit the right spot.”

He moves his thumb over her, shifting the position slightly with each motion until—

“That’s it!” Dominique exclaims.

Charlie chuckles and moves his fingers over that same place, pressing and rubbing in the same slow rhythm, mimicking the way he wants to grind against her with his cock. She moans and bucks against his hand, scorching hot against his fingers.

“Feel good?” he asks, knowing perfectly well that it does.

“It feels so good,” Dominique pants. He picks up the pace, and her hips quickly match it. “Charlie, let me take off my jeans.”

Charlie's hand abruptly stops moving. He tries not to think about Dominique spread out beside him without her jeans on. He tries not to think about touching her without her jeans getting in the way. He tries not to think about her wetness coating the fabric of her knickers. But he just keeps right on thinking about all those things and more.

“No,” he protests. “No, that’s a bad idea.” It's a really, really bad idea. She seems to have a lot of those.

She looks at him under heavy eyelids. “Why?”

_Yes, why?_ a little voice inside him demands.

“That’s not part of the deal,” he tells her – tells that little voice in his head.

“But I’ll still have on my knickers,” Dominique points out. “Knickers are clothes, aren’t they? Strictly speaking?”

A battle rages in Charlie's mind. Yes, knickers are clothes. Knickers are a barrier. That's the idea here: maintain a barrier. But they're a flimsy barrier. And he knows exactly what kind of knickers she wears. But he's strong. He can keep his fingers out of them. Er… who the fuck is he kidding? He's not strong. He's weak, weak, weak and getting weaker every minute.

“You can keep yours on,” she suggests hopefully.

Charlie narrows his eyes, thinking, but he takes too long. Dominique's hands go to her waistband, unbuttoning the button. He watches it happen, wondering why he's not stopping it. And there goes the zipper. And now she's shoving them down around her hips, and _oh fuck_. Bikini knickers. Purple. Some kind of satiny material.

Charlie's hand shoots out, closing around one of her wrists. “Don’t.” He tries to remember how to speak. “Please don’t take them off.”

Dominique gives him a wicked grin and slides her jeans the rest of the way off, kicking them to the foot of the bed. “There,” she says. “Now touch me like you were doing.”

Charlie would be absolutely crazy to do that. He knows what he's going to find if he rubs his fingers over that purple fabric. He can already see it. He can smell it, too. Does he really want to torture himself like that?

Apparently he does. He reaches out again, softly rubbing his fingers over the crotch of her knickers. _Wet, wet, wet._ He closes his eyes and exhales through pursed lips. He presses with his middle finger, searching for the hard little nub of flesh that will make her—

"Ah!"

—scream. And there it is. Her hips piston off the mattress. Her neck lengthens as she throws it back, baring it to him.

“I’m so turned on,” she whispers.

“Yeah,” he says in a quiet voice, “I can feel it.”

Then she spreads her legs wider, and Charlie has to bite his lip to keep from groaning. She opens up wide like she wants him to push that flimsy material to the side and plunge right in. She ruts against his hand. He lies there and watches her move, wondering how much longer he can go on without any friction against his cock… wondering how much longer he can keep his fingers from curling underneath that thin layer of fabric, seeking out the slick skin beneath….

“You like to watch me move like that?” Dominique asks with a mischievous twinkle in her hooded eyes.

Charlie can only groan in response. He can't take it any longer. He shifts until he's on top of her, steadying himself on his forearms until he has himself positioned exactly where he wants to be between her legs. Dominique's body cradles his perfectly. The front of his jeans is going to be soaked with her wetness. He presses down, and she wraps her legs around his waist, bucking up against him.

“ _Ah_ ,” he exhales, curling his hands under and around her shoulders, anchoring himself. He rests his forehead against hers and takes a few deep breaths. And then he starts thrusting against her. Dominique moans in pleasure, her nails scratching lightly over his back. She meets him thrust for thrust and drives him to go faster. 

“Charlie, let me run my hands over your back,” she pleads. “Under your shirt.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Okay.” She can pretty much do whatever the hell she wants to right now.

When Dominique's hands hit the bare skin of Charlie's back, his arousal multiplies. He grinds so hard against her that he can hear the bed start to squeak. She tightens her legs around him, her hips urging him on, and he decides to let himself go. The friction is perfect. He rises up on his forearms and looks down at Dominique, pumping his hips. 

She looks like a wild animal. Her eyes gleam. Her skin is flushed, and she is starting to sweat. Charlie’s rhythm grows erratic. He feels himself tightening. He knows he's going to come in his jeans if they keep this up, and it's been forever since—

“Hello! Is anyone home?”

They both freeze.

“Dominique?” calls Fleur from somewhere near the kitchen.

“Damn!” Dominique snaps. “My mother’s home!”

Charlie panics, jumping off of Dominique. He grabs her jeans and throws them at her. “Put these back on. Now!” he demands, watching her obey without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m going to have to Apparate out of here.”

Apparition has never been Charlie's preferred method of transportation, but it seems like the only way out. Never mind the fact that he'll probably splinch his dick. Maybe that would be a good thing. It seems to be getting him into a lot of trouble, and frankly, right now it's also causing him a lot of pain. He grabs his wand from his back pocket, takes a deep breath, and tries to clear his mind – a Herculean task at that moment. 

_Deliberation._ That's never been a problem for him.

_Determination._ Oh yeah, he's determined as fuck.

_Destination._ That's always been the tricky part. But at this moment, Charlie reckons that any-bloody-where else on earth is better than here.

Dominique is struggling with her jeans and staring at him in horror. Any moment now, Fleur will be at the bottom of the stairs, if she isn't there already. Charlie can't believe he let this go so far. He has no choice... he hopes with everything in him that Dominique will be able to rationally explain away the loud crack of noise….

He closes his eyes and feels that nearly unbearable sense of compression, and then….

He finds himself on his arse in the surf. He sighs with relief. He was aiming for a nearby sand dune, but at least he's still in the general vicinity. And his dick – and everything else – seems to still be intact.

It's a good thing, really – feeling the harsh cold of the sea. Charlie just sits there for a few seconds, letting it soak through his clothes, breathing hard, his wand shaking in his grip. He's half tempted to wank off right where he is. He was so close. Someone really ought to hex his balls off and get it over with.

He staggers to his feet. His legs are shaking, his sprained ankle is killing him, and his whole lower body is weighted down with his soaked jeans. He shuffles ashore, limping and shivering, and dries his clothes. 

Then Charlie Weasley decides that he wants nothing more than to see his mother.

* * *

"Charlie! What a surprise!" his Mum exclaims, wrapping him in the warm embrace that he can only get from her. He wants to hold on longer, but she pulls back to look at him. "Why didn't you Floo and tell us you were coming? Are you hungry? And, why, may I ask, are you not wearing a coat?"

Nothing makes Charlie feel at home like rapid-fire questions, though he realizes with a pang of guilt that he can only honestly answer one of them, and that it's more truthful at this moment than it's ever been in his life. "I'm starving, Mum," he says.

* * *

Feeling that all is again right with the world – though not necessarily with his hair – Charlie steps out of the fireplace at Shell Cottage and heads for the kitchen.

All is not right with the world, however, because Dominique is not at work like she’s supposed to be. She’s sitting at the kitchen table doing a crossword puzzle, and Fleur is standing at the sink, scraping carrots for dinner. Charlie feels a sinking sensation in his stomach. 

“Uncle Charlie!” Dominique exclaims in a girlish voice that he hasn’t heard her use once since he’s been here. She rises from the table and saunters in his direction. “I got the night off so we can all have dinner together. Since it’s your last night here, and Mum’s home.”

“That’s great,” Charlie lies. From the corner of his eye, he can see Fleur standing motionless, sharp kitchen knife gripped tightly. “Hullo, Fleur,” he says with a nod in her direction.

“Charlie,” she replies coolly. 

“Did you get a haircut?” Dominique asks.

Charlie stands there helplessly as she runs her fingers through his shorter curls because he can't figure out if it would look more suspicious to bat her hand away. All he can think about is the fact that he was grinding against her six hours ago, and how close they came to getting caught.

“Yeah," he says, scratching the back of his neck. "I think your grandma got carried away.”

“I like it," Dominique replies. "Very professional-looking.”

She says it with a glint in her eye that, to Charlie, sums up this entire week: he is anything but professional, and he has no business pretending, and he would be absolutely daft to move back to England.

“Dominique!” Fleur scolds, her voice taking on a shriller quality. “I told you to go wash up for dinner. Have you even had a bath today?”

Charlie thrusts his hands in his pockets, both embarrassed for Dominique and desperate to see her go. He heads for the refrigerator to get a butterbeer he doesn't want, just to get away from her. 

She follows him. "Which shampoo should I use, Uncle Charlie?" she asks, to Charlie's utter disbelief. "Coconut?" The tone of her voice changes slightly. "Or peach?"

"Dominique!" Fleur's voice now sounds almost inhuman.

"I’m going!" Dominique shouts back, and she does.

Charlie opens the butterbeer and takes a sip, leaning against the counter. "Can I help with dinner?" he asks.

Fleur narrow her eyes at him. "You’ve done enough this week, I’m sure," she replies. She gives him a scrutinizing look, and he refuses to fold under it. Eventually, she goes back to the carrots. "When is your interview?"

"Tomorrow at eleven," Charlie replies. "Return portkey leaves at two tomorrow afternoon." He knows that this isn't small talk. Fleur wants to know when he's going to be out of her house. He take another sip of butterbeer. "How’s the new nephew?"

She glances over, raising her chin. "He is perfect in every way," she says, and if she were talking to anyone else, it might sound gushing. As it is, she makes it sound as though Charlie has just suggested he was born with two heads. 

Charlie rubs his forehead and wishes more than anything that he could head to Louis's room and do anything else, but he feels it would be impolite to not at least make an effort to converse with his sister-in-law. He doesn’t know how someone with Veela blood can make him feel so much the opposite of warm and fuzzy. He’s often wondered if Fleur turns on an anti-allure just for him.

"So, you have been here during the day?" she asks, out of nowhere.

The question startles Charlie. "Yeah," he replies, idly picking at the label on the bottle. "It’s rained all week. But it’s been good to have a vacation."

"Were you here this morning?" She starts chopping the carrots, the sound of the knife on the board echoing around the kitchen.

"I spent most of the day at the Burrow," Charlie answers truthfully, determined not to be intimidated and also taking a twisted sort of pleasure in the fact that she can't prove anything.

"I see," Fleur says, her voice tight. "Dominique has not had company during the day, has she?"

Charlie wants to tell Fleur that she might be better off asking what Dominique does after work, and if it weren't for the solidarity he feels for Dominique, he would do it. At least Charlie knows his own intentions are honorable. All right, that’s a stretch, but at least they’re drug- and alcohol-free, tobacco excluded. Who knows what Dominique gets into with her peers?

"No," Charlie replies, truthfully again. "Mostly she sleeps. Or smokes cigarettes."

"Disgusting habit," Fleur snaps. "Very unladylike."

_If Fleur only knew how very unladylike her daughter really is_ , Charlie thinks. "She could be doing worse," he points out, and now he is outright reveling in Fleur's animosity.

"I am well aware of that," Fleur hisses, whirling to face him suddenly. Her eyes glint, and Charlie's breath catches because he recognizes that face. He's seen it on Dominique this week. It's gone in less than a second, though, as Fleur slips back into her cool demeanor. "I hope she has behaved herself."

Charlie takes another sip of butterbeer, this one long and pensive, and he sighs when his lips leave the bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "What do you mean?"

"Do not act stupid, Charlie," Fleur retorts, her accent becoming heavier. "She is boy-crazy. I know she had someone in her room this morning."

Charlie forces the muscles of his face to remain neutral. "What makes you think that?"

Fleur finally sets the knife down, wiping her hands on a tea towel. "Call it a mother’s instinct."

They stand there silently for a few long moments, facing off. Charlie's blood pumps through him like fire, but he feels cold, almost relaxed.

Fleur catches something out of the corner of her eyes, and her face changes entirely. "Bill!" she exclaims breathily, and less than a few seconds later, they are embracing.

"Thank Circe," Bill says, grinning from ear to ear. "I’m sick of Charlie’s cooking."

"Oi!" Charlie protests, but Bill is busy giving his wife the kind of kiss that entirely disregards Charlie's presence. "I’ll just—" He runs his fingers through his hair as he heads for the porch door. "—go have a cigarette."

* * *

Charlie looks around the dinner table and decides that this is going to be one of the most awkward meals of his life.

Bill is still looking at Fleur as though – after spending two weeks without her – he would like nothing more than to skip straight to dessert. Fleur is trying to be indulgent of Bill’s attentions while fuming at Dominique for smelling like cigarette smoke and looking at her uncle like he’s the only dinner she wants. And Dominique has her foot curled around Charlie’s calf under the table, quickly approaching his knee.

Charlie takes a bite of roast beef, but he can barely even taste it because of the way the blood is singing in his head. The combination of emotions is dizzying. He looks at Bill, and he feels a pang of guilt. Then he looks at Fleur, and he feels a perverse surge of smugness. Then Dominique’s toes rub circles on the inside of his thigh, and he realizes that, no matter what else he is feeling, his cock is going to be painfully erect through this entire meal.

“Charlie?”

Charlie jumps, realizing that he’s holding a bite of roast potatoes halfway to his mouth. “Sorry, what?”

Bill gives him a rare look of pity. “Worried about the interview?” he asks.

Charlie puts down his fork and drags his hand over his jaw. Dominique traces the inseam of his jeans, always stopping just short of his crotch. “I… yeah, a bit.” He shrugs. “It’ll work out.” 

Bill’s face relaxes, and he adds salt to his potatoes. “So how are Mum and Dad?”

“Good.” Charlie hopes Dominique will stick to the inside of his thigh at least until the conversation shifts away from him. “Mum’s busy putting together Easter eggs.”

Fleur turns up her nose at that, but Bill thoughtfully examines a bite of roast beef, which is redder than everyone else’s. “Merlin, I miss Mum’s Easter eggs,” he says. “The woman’s toffee is legendary. I reckon you’ll be off her list, too, Dom. Now that you’re out of Hogwarts.”

Dominique looks straight at Charlie. “Don’t embarrass me, Dad,” she replies coolly. When she says the word _Dad_ , she presses her heel against the bulge in Charlie’s jeans for emphasis, and he feels a simultaneous thrill of guilt and excitement. “I have more grown-up tastes these days.” 

“You’re never too old for Easter eggs,” Charlie suggests, avoiding Bill's eye. He picks his cutlery back up, determined to not shift in his seat like he wants to. “I still get one every year.” 

Bill chuckles. “Well, Mum feels sorry for the poor, lone bachelor, doesn’t she?”

Dominique gives him a wicked grin and presses a little harder, the ball of her foot stroking his length with exquisite pressure, and Charlie feels a twisted sort of amusement at the thought of anyone feeling sorry for him right now. “You should let her cut your hair,” Charlie says, “and you might get one, too.”

“Suck-up,” Bill jokes.

“And Dad’s gadget collection has expanded into Percy’s old room,” Charlie continues, stubbornly determined to not give Dominique the pleasure of seeing him crumble. His attempts at eating, however, still prove futile. “Mum’s not pleased. Apparently Dad’s still hitting Muggle estate sales on weekends.” 

“Yeah, he says the new department head cuts corners,” Bill says, rolling eyes. With a wistful sigh, he adds, “Weasleys never really retire, I suppose.”

_Why retire when you love what you do?_ Charlie thinks. “Guess not.”

“My father has also retired, just this year,” Fleur chimes in. She reaches up and wipes a crumb of bread off of Bill’s lip. “Bill, you will never believe where he and Maman are going for their wedding anniversary….”

But Charlie has no idea where Monsieur Delacour and his wife are going because Dominique takes advantage of her mother's chattering and starts to give Charlie the precise rhythm that he would use on himself. He stares blindly at his food. His jeans are becoming painful, and he wants so badly to reach under the table and unzip them… to feel Dominique’s foot massaging him over just his pants… feel her toes curling over the sensitive head of his cock…. He grips his fork more tightly and glances across the table to find Dominique smirking at him. 

“…and Gabrielle’s friend Monique has a cousin who works at St. Mungo’s,” Fleur prattles on, “and she says they will take trainee healer assistants with only three N.E.W.T.s.”

“I don’t want to be around smelly old sick people!” Dominique exclaims.

Her outburst takes Charlie by surprise, especially since she doesn’t let up one bit with the motion of her foot.

“You cannot work at a pub the rest of your life, young lady,” Fleur snaps. 

“Maybe I’ll work with dragons.”

Charlie’s hips jerk uncontrollably under the table at that thought. He is horrified by the idea of Dominique working on the reserve with him, and he would do anything in his power to keep it from happening as long as he’s there. But another part of him thrills at the thought of her far away from Fleur, far away from their family, in that isolated place where there is only cold and fire and danger and instinct… thrills at the thought of all of the places on the reserve that he could have her, and all of the ways—

“Anyway, they’ll be down a Weasley if Uncle Charlie takes the job at the Ministry,” Dominique points out, and Charlie’s fantasies grind to a halt even as her foot continues to work him. “And dragons can’t be much worse than drunks.”

Through his haze of arousal, Charlie considers that Fleur must recoil from the notion of any of her children keeping dragons. Sure enough, she is glaring at him. He really wishes she would put down her knife. “Is this what you have been doing this week, Charlie? Talking my daughter into running away to Romania to take your place?”

“Now, hang on,” Charlie growls, trying to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head at the pleasure that Dominique is mercilessly giving him. “This is the first I’ve heard of this.”

"Chill out, Mum," Dominique sasses, and – as though she realizes she's crossed a line – she drops her foot. "I'm not going to run off to be a dragon keeper. And anyway, Charlie isn't going to leave the reserve."

He realizes it's true the moment she says it. 

"Don’t tell your mother to _chill out_!" Bill is the most even-tempered of any of his siblings – a quality crucial to curse-breaking. He rarely raises his voice, and even now, it's not quite a shout, but it's enough to make everyone at the table visibly tense. "And it's _Uncle_ Charlie."

Charlie takes in the look of pure loathing on Fleur’s face and the surprised concern on Bill’s, and he reckons this dinner will be a much more pleasant affair if he's not part of it. This is not to mention the fact that he's so turned on that he feels like he’s a few good strokes away from shooting off in his jeans… _again_.

“Great dinner, Fleur,” he lies. He’s barely had a bite. He scoots his chair back and hopes his erection is not too conspicuous. “Now if you'll excuse me, I probably need to start packing.”

From the look on Fleur’s face, truer words were never spoken.

* * *

When Charlie gets to Louis's room, he closes and locks the door and leans against it, palm digging into the doorjamb. With his other hand, he yanks down his zipper and takes out his painfully hard cock. He watches that redhead straddle the same broom that's under his bed, and jacks off like it's the last chance he's ever going to get. In less than three minutes, he's coming all over Louis's posters, his spunk hitting tits, lips, broom handles, everything….

* * *

The rest of the evening passes in a blur. Charlie lies on the bed for an indeterminate amount of time, trying to figure out whether or not to just blow off his interview. He never hears Dominique come to her room. Finally, he packs haphazardly, and then his stomach is growling so badly that he has no choice but to make a trip back downstairs. When he steps onto the landing, he notices that the door to Bill and Fleur's room is closed.

There's no one downstairs. He looks out the kitchen window, but Dominique is not outside smoking. He makes a roast beef sandwich and eats it with a tumbler of firewhiskey. He hears the shower upstairs turn on, and when he turns around, Bill is standing in the kitchen doorway looking tousled. Even though it's obvious that Bill has just gotten fabulously laid, there's a regretful look on his face, and sure enough—

"Sorry about dinner," Bill says. But there's also a hardness around his eyes. 

Charlie stuffs his hands in his pockets and clears his throat. He doesn't think he owes Bill an apology for dinner – well, not unless he counts the thing that Bill doesn't know about. "Dominique's always had a bit of a wild streak, hasn't she?"

Bill crosses his arms. "Know who she reminds me of sometimes?" he retorts.

Yeah, Charlie knows. "I guess every family's got to have a black sheep." Strictly speaking, he supposes Percy is the black sheep. But Percy got married. Percy had children. Sometimes Charlie can't help feeling like he never really belonged here in England.

Bill squints at Charlie, and the look on his face reminds Charlie of the time he swiped Bill's new self-inking quill and accidentally broke the tip. It was Bill's prize for making Head Boy. Bill never outright accused Charlie, and Charlie never confessed, but Charlie felt Bill's suspicion.

Finally, Bill steps away from the door and enters the kitchen, filling a glass with water and taking a long drink. "Anyway, I'm glad you could come for the week. It was good to see you again." To make up for the rare moment of brotherly affection, Bill attacks the top of Charlie's head with his knuckles.

A minor wrestling match ensues, and both of them seem to get out of breath more quickly than they used to.

* * *

Charlie lies in bed, wide awake, feeling edgy and wishing he had a cigarette. He stares at Louis's Snitch clock. 2:24am.

He strains his ears, listening for any sign of Dominique in the room next door, but there's nothing. The thought occurs to him that maybe dinner was the last time he'll see her for a while, and he's torn between relief and disappointment. He can't imagine where things would go if he weren't leaving the next day… or what would have happened if Fleur had not returned when she did….

By 2:40, Charlie is starting to give up on sleep. As hard as he tried this week, he's out of his normal routine now, and that first day back on the reserve is going to be brutal. By 3:00, he's worrying about how the hell he's supposed to interview for a job he doesn't want, but he thinks it would be burning bridges to not follow through with it. By 3:15, exhaustion sets in, and he starts to slip into that trancelike stage of insomnia – not sleep, but not consciousness, either.

His Mum wants him to see Phil about his ankle, and Phil tells him that broomstick-serving kits are half price, but only if Charlie is willing to speak to the other customers about how to quit smoking. Bill is modeling a new Cannons jersey near the storefront, and he turns around, red in the face, and he tells Phil that Charlie is the one who threatened to set fire to the inventory of racing brooms….

The door opens, and Charlie jerks, sitting straight up in bed. It's not a dream. Dominique is wearing a baggy nightshirt that falls to mid-thigh, and she's closing the door behind her.

It's 3:43am.

"Are you drunk?" Charlie whispers, rubbing his eyes.

"Shh!" she hisses. She walks towards the bed. Charlie freezes. "No, I'm not drunk."

Dominique lifts one knee onto the bed, and Charlie sees it happen as though in slow motion, acutely aware of the fact that he's wearing nothing but his pants under the covers. His entire body starts to throb with anticipation as he realizes that this is really about to happen. It doesn't matter that he's in his nephew's bed, with his brother right down the hall. Dominique is crawling up the bed towards him, and he already knows he's not going to stop her.

But he has to make an attempt. "What are you doing?" he demands in a whisper, but even as he says it, he's scooting back against the pillows, making room for her, and he's already getting hard.

She hovers above him on her hands and knees, the ends of her long hair brushing across his chest. "I might not see you in the morning. I came to say goodbye." Her gaze visibly drifts over his bare torso. "And wish you good luck."

The neckline of her nightshirt is hanging down, and Charlie can see her small breasts beneath it. They serve to remind him of just how young she is. Her entire body is pert and lithe, though there is no mistaking the exaggerated curve of her hips, and he wants nothing more than to reach up and grasp them in his fingers. He closes his eyes and clenches his fists in the covers. "If your parents catch you in here—"

"Mum thinks I'm staying with a friend." Her hair caresses the side of his face, and he feels her lips hovering just above his. "We're safe."

Of all the things in the world that they could possibly be, Charlie thinks that _safe_ has got to be at the bottom of the list. Her lips softly brush his, and Charlie swallows a moan. 

"But you have to be quiet," Dominique whispers against his mouth. She takes his upper lip between hers, and Charlie's hips jerk involuntarily. "Can you do that, Uncle Charlie?"

Charlie reckons he must be certifiably insane – maybe even criminally insane – because when she calls him _Uncle Charlie_ , a flood of sensation spreads through his abdomen. He feels helpless to his arousal, even as wrong as it is, and there's something intoxicating about being swept along like that. It's a feeling of teetering right on the edge of control, and Charlie has spent his whole life chasing that feeling. 

"Can you be quiet?" Dominique asks again.

"Yes," Charlie whispers. He looks up. The side of her face is lit by the yellow light from the clock – his nephew's clock. He wants to reach up and pull her down into an almost punishing kiss, but he's determined to let her lead – and, in fact, the idea of her leading is one of the things making his whole body thrum.

Dominique smiles. "I know you don't want to be quiet."

Hell no, he doesn't want to be quiet, but he lies there silently. 

"I bet you usually make a lot of noise, don't you?" she asks, pressing soft, wet kisses along his jaw. "I've fantasized about what it would be like to fuck you, Charlie. You surprise me, though. I always thought you would be rough."

Everyone thinks that. He looks rough. He knows that. Women expect it of him. Right now he can't think of anything more alluring than being made love to. It almost feels like he's the teenager here.

When Dominique's lips reach his ear, he tenses, overcome with the sensation of her hot breath against his earlobe. "You know, I'm not wearing anything under this shirt," she whispers.

Her words slam through his veins like fire, and his hands tingle. The thought of her bare skin so close to him is nearly unbearable. He can't resist. He lifts one hand to her thigh and slides it upward under her nightshirt. He pauses at her hip, eyes closed, breath held. Then he slowly spreads his fingers until he has a handful of the soft, round flesh of her bum. 

Dominique gasps at the touch, and her hips start to move the smallest bit, grinding against nothing. "Charlie," she pants, "wanna feel how wet I am?"

Charlie nearly bites through his bottom lip at that, his lungful of air bursting from his flared nostrils. "Yes, I do," he drawls quietly. 

"Feel."

He holds onto her hip with one hand and drags the fingers of his other hand down her belly until his fingertips reach the curls at her pubic bone. He takes a deep breath and twists his hand and slides his fingers through all of that hot, slick softness. He shudders at the thought of piercing that velvety flesh with his dick. 

Dominique's legs shake slightly. "You like that?" she whispers. Her voice has lost its teasing tone. She sounds as breathless as he feels, and he snaps. He threads his free hand into her hair and pulls her head down, his teeth bared. He knows there's no going back if he kisses her. He exhales heavily at the thought, and then he can't hold back any longer. He crushes her mouth to his.

Their tongues tangle, lips working at each other in rhythmic battle, and Charlie mindlessly kicks at the covers. He wants to feel… _fuck_ … he just wants to get inside her. This is insane. For pity's sake, he just had a wank eight hours ago. Even so, it's like he's never had his hand on a wet pussy and can't get enough, not quickly enough. He's practically choking from holding back his moans, and in the absolute quiet of the room, the wet sounds are magnified: the slick smacking of lips and tongues; the obscene, sticky sound of his fingers working her soaking wet cunt.

Charlie breaks the kiss, panting for breath, and reaches down to push his pants off, finally kicking them and the covers clear off the end of the bed. Then he feels a momentary stab of uneasiness with his cock bared and leaking like that. She's still wearing that nightshirt, but all other barriers between them are gone. "Dominique—"

She cuts him off with another bruising kiss and wraps her hand around his cock, and it takes all of Charlie's control not to growl through his nose. His hips work, trying to drive his length more quickly through the tight circle of her fingers, and he thinks about how unbelievably embarrassing it would be if he got off from this like a freaking eighteen-year-old, before he even got a chance to bury himself inside her.

Dominique drags her mouth away from his and down over his jaw, leaving a trail of sticky saliva over his throat, stopping to circle the tip of her tongue over his Adam's apple. "You're nice and thick," she whispers as she strokes him. 

Charlie grinds his teeth. "Dominique," he pants. "Please."

She nibbles at his earlobe, her thumb caressing the sensitive spot just beneath the head of his cock. "You want me?" she teases.

"Yes," he snaps.

"You want to fuck me, Uncle Charlie?" she asks, the softly whispered words caressing the shell of his ear and shooting down his spine. Dominique grasps him firmly, rubbing the tip of his cock around and around her clit.

Charlie can actually feel himself dripping – at the wrongness of that question, and the closeness of her entrance, so close that he could impale her with one well-timed thrust. It would only take one snap of his hips, and he could ease this hunger that's been building in him all week. "Yes," he mouths, his voice temporarily lost. He swallows to wet his throat. "Please, sit down on me."

She guides him to her opening, but then she pauses, staring down at him with an unreadable look on her face. The moment stretches on, and Charlie once again grasps fistfuls of the sheets at his sides, bracing himself for the pleasure of her wet heat, but it doesn't come.

"Dominique?"

She remains still, and Charlie starts to panic a little bit. He could stop now, but he _really_ doesn't want to. His whole body is buzzing with need, his cock aching for friction.

He props himself up on his elbows. "Dominique?" He feels a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. "You've done this before, right?"

"Of course," she replies. The lines of her face soften just enough that Charlie knows she isn't lying, but she doesn't meet his eye. "Maybe not as much as I let on," she continues, her voice barely audible. She wets her lips. "Not as much as you, anyway."

Through the haze of his arousal, he almost laughs at that. For one thing – and Charlie fully recognizes the perversity of this thought – he feels relief that his niece isn't out there spreading herself around. For another thing, she can't possibly know that he hasn't been laid in over a year and that he's about to go insane right now. "You're fine," he says, cupping one hand over her shoulder and squeezing slightly. He surrenders to a brief chuckle. "You can't do it wrong. Trust me."

Dominique lifts her head to meet his gaze, and then, reassured, she starts making small thrusting motions against him, each one burying him more deeply. She is maddeningly tight, and Charlie digs the nails of his free hand into his palm and concentrates on not thrusting up into that silky heat. Her lips part, and her brows knit together as she works, and finally, with a mutual sigh, they're completely joined. 

"How's that?" she whispers.

Charlie's licks his lips and nods slightly. "Move," is all he can manage.

"Like this?" She slowly lifts up, almost completely off of him, and then she starts a slow, sensual rhythm that would never make him come.

"Perfect," he says, nevertheless, because any motion is good motion, and now that she's moving, Charlie decides that he might want this to go on forever. He runs his hands lightly over her back and nips at her lips, but he is determined to keep his own hips still, letting her set the pace. "Just like that. Keep that up as long as you like."

Dominique's eyes glaze over at that, and she starts to move more quickly. 

"Feel good?" he whispers against her mouth. 

"Yeah," she pants, hips grinding down on him.

Charlie relaxes into the motion. "Take this off," he suggests quietly, pushing up the hem of her nightshirt. With a lazy smile, she lifts it up and over her head, tossing it aside, and Charlie's jaw tightens at the sight before him. She supports herself with her hands on his chest and arches her back, hair spilling over her shoulders as she thrusts. Her nipples are tight peaks, and beads of sweat break out over her neck. "That's it," he whispers encouragingly, enchanted by the vision of her lost in her own pleasure like that. 

She keeps it up, her thrusts getting stronger. Charlie worries that the bed will start squeaking under the motion. "Quietly," he reminds her, and she bites her lip in response. Then she does something that nearly melts Charlie's heart. She looks down at him, and vulnerability flashes in her eyes, and she takes his wrists and guides his arms around her in an embrace.

Charlie exhales heavily and holds her tightly against him, stroking her back as her motions become more frantic. She buries her face in his neck, and before long Charlie can feel her body start to tense. The muscles all over her body tighten, and her breathing gets shaky, and then he hears a faint whimper right against his ear, and she stills. Charlie bites down on the inside of his cheek as her cunt clenches around him, her whole body jerking with the spasms of her release.

Dominique's heart pounds so furiously that Charlie feels it beating where she's crushed against him. After a few long moments, she gasps a contented _wow_ , and Charlie feels such a surge of pride and affection that he doesn't even mind the temporary absence of friction.

"Have fun there?" he teases her, and she seems to snap back.

She raises her head and presses her lips against his in a gentle rhythm, thrusting out a few residual tremors. "It's your turn to be on top," she whispers.

Charlie closes his eyes and take a deep breath, feeling his cock twitch at the thought. Somehow, the idea of being on top feels sleazy to him, which is ridiculous considering what they've already done. Then Dominique starts pulling off of him, and when he opens his eyes, he again sees that vulnerability, only this time it's more like wide-eyed expectation. It makes her look every bit her age, and it makes Charlie feel her age.

"Charlie?" she nudges him.

"Yeah," he whispers as they shift positions. He props himself on one forearm and pushes her damp hair off of her neck. "Just thinking…" 

"Less thinking, more fucking," Dominique whispers, and the mischievous grin returns to her face. 

Charlie is still stretched taught and ready to snap, but he doesn't want this moment to end, either. He lets his gaze drift over her naked body and realizes he hasn't even touched her breasts. Her nipples are the palest pink, and he bends his head and gently sucks one into a tight peak. Pulling back with a wet noise, he admires his work, rubbing the resulting moisture around with the tip of his finger before moving to the other.

Dominique starts to squirm under him, her fingers sifting through his hair, and Charlie eases up at last. Holding his breath, he slowly drags his index finger from the hollow of her throat down through the valley between her breasts, down over her navel, down to the red curls between her legs, matted with the moisture of her orgasm. She is still so wet, and all of that pink flesh is swollen and ready, and Charlie releases that breath and slips his finger inside her.

Her knees are bent slightly, her feet flat against the bed, and she bucks against his hand. It's probably a good position for her, but Charlie wants to open her up all the way. He begins slipping into that hungry, deafening zone where nothing matters – not the fact that she's his niece, not the fact that she's so young, not the fact that he could hurt her with his search for release. He wants to let himself go in a way that he hasn't in years. She was right. They're safe here, where they have to be quiet. 

Nearly trembling from the imperative to proceed, Charlie removes his finger, hissing when her inner muscles grasp at him. He watches Dominique's face carefully. Her eyes are closed, lips parted, neck lengthened and moving on a swallow. He hesitates for a moment and then places the heel of his palm against the inside of her thigh and gently pushes. With a gasp, she obeys the touch, spreading her legs as wide as they'll go. 

Charlie closes his eyes, inhaling and memorizing the scent of the moment. He can smell the tang of her wetness, and the bed is already thick with the musk of sweat and sex. And he also smells—

"Peach?" he asks on a quiet huff of almost-laughter, remembering her earlier question about shampoo.

The corner's of Dominique's lips twitch. "I took a wild guess," she replies.

Biting back a groan, Charlie lays siege to her mouth, their lips half-open against each other as their tongues thrust and tangle together. Sweat clings to them both, and Charlie moves over Dominique, his unmanly whimper lost in the kiss when her hard nipples rake across his chest. He can't wait any longer. He lines himself up and pushes forward, sinking into all of that swollen tightness. 

He's lost. He breaks the kiss and presses his forehead against hers, baring his teeth as he realizes that he's not going to be able to thrust, not like he wants to. So he starts moving slowly, feeling the muscles in his abdomen twitch involuntarily at the slick drag of his cock back and forth against her grasping walls. Dominique releases a gasp, and Charlie falls to his forearms, his hands curling over shoulders almost hesitantly, as though even that small touch is too much combined with the maddening heat and pressure enveloping him.

Charlie has to have more, and before he even realizes what he's doing, he's moving to hook his hand under her knee, spreading her even further and angling her hips up so that he can go deeper. "All right?" he whispers when he hears her breath catch.

" _Ohyeah_ ," Dominique pants, and it's all the encouragement he needs to entirely immerse himself in his motions. He buries himself until his balls rest against the curve of her bum, and then, as quietly as he can, he snaps his hips, picking up speed and letting her young, tight body provide the pressure. He can't believe it when he feels himself already so close to the edge. He hauls her leg up even further, leveraging the inside of his elbow against the inside of her knee, and he pumps away until the familiar tension has his heart throbbing fit to burst. He can't take a breath or do anything but strive blindly for it, until finally it overwhelms him completely, and all he can do is hold still and be transported in release.

He collapses, and Dominique's hands softly caress his sweat-damp back and tangle in his hair. Charlie never wants to leave this moment. He doesn't want to get any older than this, and he doesn't want Dominique to have to get older, either, and he doesn't want to go home, and he never, ever wants to move back. His eyes sting even as pleasure hums through his veins, and mostly it's because she can't possibly know… she can't possibly understand that, eventually, moments like these are a sunlit clearing amidst a deep wood of obligation and worry and regret… but she will know, too soon….

"Charlie," she purrs, and he almost chokes on an unidentifiable sound that his body wants to make. "You're my favorite."

* * *

The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures smells funny, and not in a way that Charlie Weasley can appreciate. Dirt, sweat, cinders, dragon dung: these are all welcome, comfortable scents. The DRCMC smells like musty carpet and old people.

The department head, Morty Russeldorf, sits behind a cramped desk stacked with paperwork that has actually started to yellow with age, looking over Charlie's C.V. without a lot of real interest. He appears to be about the same age as Charlie's father. His sleeves are rolled up, and his forearms are as heavily muscled as Charlie's, but his considerable brawn has otherwise softened from office work. His shoulders are especially round.

Finally, Russeldorf tosses the C.V. down on a pile where Charlie thinks it will probably remain for the next decade, slowly buried under anything else that happens to come across this man's desk. He sighs dramatically and leans back, folding his hands behind his head. "We get a lot of you blokes in your fifties coming through here," he says.

"I'm forty-nine," Charlie reminds him politely. That distinction is important.

"Close enough," he replies, waving his large hand dismissively. "I know how it is. You've been out there working in the field, and all of a sudden your body isn't cooperating like it used to. It's always something stupid, too. Believe me, I know." He pauses for effect, staring off wistfully. "I started out in the lab, but then I did field research with kelpies for over forty years. Almost half a century I risked getting dragged to the bottom of a loch and shredded to bits, and you know what got me in the end?"

Charlie figures it's a rhetorical question, so he remains silent.

"Slipped on a wet rock and shattered my kneecap," Russeldorf grumbles. "After a certain age, regrown bones are never quite the same, you know."

Suddenly, Charlie feels grateful that his ankle was not more seriously injured. He realizes how stupid it was to try out a brand new broom in the rain. He decides that maybe he _should_ start wearing more of the protective gear that he has often eschewed as too cumbersome.

"Then there was the sex." 

Charlie gives a start, thinking he must be hearing things. Russeldorf is still staring off into space. "Eh… excuse me?" Charlie nudges him.

A pensive smile crosses Russeldorf's lips. "In my fifties, I couldn't get enough shagging. Figured I was running out of time before stuff really stopped working. Do you know—" Here he drops his hands, eyes darting briefly to the door before he leans forward over the mountains of parchment. "—once I shagged one of my daughter's friends in a loo at a Quidditch match?" 

Russeldorf gives a hesitant bark of laughter, but Charlie can't find it in himself to join in. 

"No clue what I was thinking," Russeldorf continues, clearing his throat. "Wasn't my finest moment, but ah well. You live, you learn." He gives Charlie a scrutinizing look. "Gotta forgive yourself these little things and move on. Life's too short, and it gets shorter every day, especially when you work with critters."

Granted, Charlie hasn't had a job interview in over thirty years, but this all seems highly irregular, even if it is exactly what he needs to hear. And he feels somewhat aggravated that it's coming from such an unlikely and unlikable source.

As though sensing Charlie's discomfort, Russeldorf again flaps his hand around. "But enough of all that nonsense. I have to say, Charlie, this department would be lucky to have you. Your work on the reserve is legendary. You're old enough that you've dusted off your restlessness, but you're young enough to still have energy. You'd be perfect for upper management." He pauses. "So tell me something."

Charlie swallows, preparing to begin the real interview and not sure how much effort he really wants to put into it. "Yes, sir?"

Russeldorf squints at him. "Why do you want to work here?"

Charlie thinks about his new broom waiting for him in the lobby. Despite the fact that they didn't start out on the best of terms, he can't wait to ride it over the mountain range encircling the reserve, a checkerboard of forest and rock beneath him, the cliffs colored by the occasional burst of flame. He thinks about the stolen knickers in the pocket of his new robes, and how they represent a stolen moment that cannot and should not ever be replicated, and how to be near such temptation on a regular basis would cheapen the perverse beauty of that moment.

He thinks about freedom.

"I don't."

Charlie's reply is met with a nod and a cordial grin.

_The End_


End file.
